INQUA Annual Report 2018 Final Annual Report_2018.pdf · of’soil3forming’processes’...
Transcript of INQUA Annual Report 2018 Final Annual Report_2018.pdf · of’soil3forming’processes’...
INQUA ANNUAL REPORT 2018
Annual Executive Meeting
The annual INQUA Executive meeting was hosted in March by Zhengtang Guo, and their colleagues at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Associate professors Chenxi Xu and Wenling An, and postdocs Xiaolin Ren and Wenchao Zhang, provided travel and accommodation support. A team of graduate students, Ms Bin Hu, Ms. Yu Fu, Mr Fan Yang, Ms Pei Li, Ms Wenqui Jiang, Mr Yang Fu, Mr Xinbo Gao, Ms Yunxia Jia, Mr Zhilin He, Ms Junyan Geng, and Ms Jie Yu assisted commendably with day-‐to-‐day activities.
INQUA Participants: Allan Ashworth (Pres., USA), Margaret Avery (Past Pres., South Africa), Brian Chase (Sec.-‐Gen. France), Freek Busschers (Treasurer, The Netherlands), Zhengtang Guo (VP, China), Franck Audemard (VP, Venezuela), Thijs Van Kolfschoten, VP, The Netherlands, Craig Schloss (CMP Pres., Australia), Alessandro Michetti (TERPRO Pres., Italy), Atte Korhola (PALCOMM Pres., Finland), Mazami Izuho, (VP, HABCOM, Japan), Lewis Owen, (VP, SACCOM, USA), Eduardo Alarcón (ECR rep., Chile), Min-‐Te Chen (Editor, QI, Taiwan). Unable to attend: Ashok Singvhi (VP, India), Mauro Coltorti (Pres., SACCOM, Italy), Nicki Whitehouse (Pres., HABCOM, UK).
Part of the meeting was dedicated to learning more about the activities of the Chinese Association for Quaternary Research (CHIQUA) in a session organized by President Zhengtang Guo and Secretary General Jule Xiao. At the meeting, representatives of the 15 commissions of CHIQUA highlighted the current activities in their disciplines and in so doing demonstrated that Quaternary research in China is well-‐supported, relevant, and of the highest quality. Presenters at the meeting were: Liping Zhou (Stratigraphy and Chronology), Tao Deng (Biological Evolution and the Environment), Xing Gao (Human Evolution and Environmental Archaeology), Bin Xue (Ecosystem Evolution), Shucheng Xie (Biogeochemical Cycles), Xiaomin Fang (Tectonics and Climate), Huaya Lu (Interglacial Climate and the Environment), Youbin Sun (Abrupt Climate Changes), Xiuqi Fang (Historical Climate Changes), Xiaodong Liu (Paleoclimate Modeling), Baotian Pan (Geomorphic Evolution and the Environment), Yongjin Wang (Karst and the Environment), Shouye Yang (Coastal and Marine processes), Cunde Xiao (Polar Quaternary), and Zhiqing Li (Applied Quaternary).
INQUA officers meeting with the President and Commission Officers of CHIQUA facilitated by Zhengtang Guo, Chenxi Xu, and students and ECRs of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing.
Personnel Changes 2018
Mauro Coltorti resigned as president of SACCOM and was replaced by Lewis Owen who will serve in an interim capacity until a new president is elected for the next inter-‐congress period. Lyudmila Shumilovskikh graduated from the ranks of the ECR and was replaced by Eduardo Alarcón
Membership Changes Belarus was approved to continue its associate membership. Spain also requested associate membership until such time that financial conditions allowed it to resume being a dues-‐paying member Finances Freek Busschers, Treasurer, reported that the income for the year was €250,124 with €126,250 coming from membership dues and €124,573 in royalties from Elsevier. Expenditures included €112,345 in support of intercongress period projects and €19,384 for the annual Executive and Commission President’s meeting in Beijing. Since 2015, funds have been held in reserve to provide travel bursaries for ECRs and DCRs presenting their research at the XX INQUA congress in Dublin, 2019. The total held in reserve for this purpose is ~ €380,000. Requests for travel bursaries will exceed €600,000. Proposed changes to Membership fees Ashok Singhvi (VP) and Zhentang Guo (VP) have assembled a working committee of Quaternary researchers examining issues related to membership dues, fee structure (fee banding) and voting privileges. They are tasked with formulating a proposal to be discussed with the International Council in Dublin. Committee membership is Naki Akcar (Switzerland), Franck Bassinot (France), Greg Botha (South Africa), Min-‐Te Chen (Taipei), Francesco Chiocci (Italy), Peter Coxon (Ireland), Eiliv Larsen (Norway), Marks Leszek (Poland), David Lowe (New Zealand), Rolfe Mandel (USA), Ljerka Marjanac (Croatia), Frank Preusser (Germany), Jessica Reeves (Australia) and Jule Xiao (China). 1. Annual Increase to fees The INQUA Executive is proposing that for the future there should be an automatic annual increase to membership fees. Further it is proposed that the dues increase be indexed to inflation rate as reported in Consumer Price Index (CPI) or another global inflation index. Most colleagues agreed for an automatic increase to annual dues. However, there are different views about the indices to be used.
2. Membership dues, fee banding and voting privileges Fee banding and linkage to voting privileges continues to be a controversial topic even though it is widely deployed by other related international organizations. The International Union of Geodesy and Geopysics (IUGG) model is one that has been examined. In that model, distinction is made between votes on scientific and administrative matters and those of finances. From the IUGG Bye-‐Laws:
a) On questions of scientific nature, or of administrative nature, or of a character partly administrative and partly scientific not involving matters of finance, voting shall be in Council by Member Countries, each Council Delegate having one vote, provided that the subscription of the Adhering Body has been paid up to the end of the calendar year preceding the voting.
b) On questions involving finance, voting shall be in Council by Member Countries with the provision that a voting country must have paid its subscriptions up to the end of the calendar year preceding voting in
Council. The number of votes allotted to each Member Country shall be equal to the number of its category of membership.
The INQUA Executive will present the International Council with a list of choices for discussion and action at the Congress in Dublin.
3. INQUA brand name The INQUA Exec proposes that in future congresses a fee be added to the congress
registration that will help defray expenditures (travel expenditures of INQUA awardees, registration fees for Honorary Life Fellows, the travel bursary program for ECRs and DCRs). INQUA recognizes that host nations accept fiscal risks associated with organizing congresses and that the fee would only become available to INQUA after all other fiscal liabilities of the LOC had been covered. There is general agreement that a €30 fee would be appropriate for this purpose.
Commission Activities New funding was provided for 24 projects and funding for an additional four projects was rolled over from 2017. Commission Proposal Title Key activity PI’s CMP PALSEA2: Paleo-‐
constraints on sea-‐level rise
PALSEA (PALeo constraints on SEA level rise) working group and the PAGES-‐PMIP Working Group on Quaternary Interglacials (QUIGS) held their first joint workshop.
Jacqueline Austermann, Natasha Barlow, Jeremy Shakun, Alessio Rovere
HOLSEA: Geographic variability of Holocene relative sea level
A joint CMP meeting was held in Italy in September 2018. The joint meeting was attended by members from: PALSEA2; QMI; “HOLSEA”; and “MOPP-‐MEDFLOOD”. Attended by 63 researchers, from 12 counties. Participants were 40% female to 60% male. Of 75% were from either one or a combination of ECR, DCR.
Nicole Khan, Benjamin Horton, Robert Kopp, Erica Ashe
MEDFLOOD-‐MOPP: Modelling paleo processes
Matteo Vacchi, Sara Biolchi, Thomas Lorscheid, Giovanni Scicchitano
Late Quaternary records of coastal inundation due to earth surface deformation, tsunami, and storms (QMI)
Simon Engelhart, Vanessa Heyvaert, Daniel Melnick, Fengling Yu
PALSEA2: Paleo-‐constraints on sea-‐level rise
PALSEA (PALeo constraints on SEA level rise) working group and the PAGES-‐PMIP Working Group on Quaternary Interglacials (QUIGS) held their first joint workshop.
Jacqueline Austermann, Natasha Barlow, Jeremy Shakun, Alessio Rovere
HABCOM HoLa: Holocene global landuse
Workshop delayed until 6-‐7 March 2019, UPenn Centre in New Delhi (India). The IFG has been working toward the creation of the first global database on land use related parameters comparable at local, regional and global scale, and the derivation of critical spatial and
Marco Madella, Kathleen Morrison, Marie-‐José Gaillard
temporal data sets to measure and monitor land change (mapping) though the agglomeration of regional information. Currently well developed areas are East Africa and the Sahara, South Asia and Europe. People involved from across US, Africa, Europe, Asia
METHOD: Modelling environmental dynamics and hominin dispersals around the mid-‐Pleistocene revolution
Two training labs: (i) “ABM – agent-‐based modeling” (March 2018); Computational models in Palaeolithic Archaeology and Palaeoecology” (27th November); (ii) workshop on Burgos “We boldly went. Advances and progress modelling the MPR”. Workshop III-‐2018. 27 people involved in activities from Spain, Germany, France, Italy, UK, Ukraine, Australia, Canada.
Jesús Rodríguez, Ana Mateos, Christine Hertler, Maria Rita Palombo
Ground squirrels on the march: expansion and speciation in the Quaternary of the Circum-‐Pontic area and surroundings
Two workshops: (i) “The Ground Squirrel Story: 3 years of research on geographical barriers, expansion and speciation in the Quaternary of the Circum-‐Pontic area and surroundings” co-‐ordinated by Piroska Pazonyi, Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest (Hungary), 8th – 11th May 2018. (ii) NICHE, working meeting coordinated by Leonid Rekovets, National Museum of Natural History NAS of Ukraine, Kyiv; 11th-‐15th of September 2018; Also participation in AMB training lab for METHOD. Scientists from Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Serbia, Hungary, Russia, UK involved.
Lilia Popova, Lutz Maul, Igor Zagorodniuk
Enhancing quantitative reconstructions skills in South Asian palynology and paleoecology
A workshop “Methods and Challenges of Quantititative Palynology and Paleoecology in SE Asia” for 31 participants was held in Pudicherry, India. The participants included 17 ECR students, mostly from India.
K. Anupama, T. Premathilake, S. Prasad
PALCOM SHAPE: Southern Hemisphere assessment of palaeo-‐environments
The SHAPE workshop on variability, abrupt changes and tipping points was held 2-‐3 February 2018 at University of Wollongong, Australia with over 30 scientists from 10 different institutions and 5 countries attending the workshop. Studies have improved the representativeness of past changes and provided new quantitative and qualitative evidence of past conditions in the SH during the Quaternary.
Andrew Lorrey, Steven Phipps, Maisa Rojas, Brian Chase
PotASH: Palaeolakes of the arid southern
A workshop was held on the 12th April in Vienna at the European Geosciences
Sallie Burrough, Joy Singarayer
hemisphere Union. The workshop consisted of 3 brief update talks followed by discussion and activities pertaining to the creation of a publication on the accumulating data of the group. 10 scientists attended the meeting
SHeMAX: The Last Glacial Maximum in the Southern Hemisphere
No specific activities in 2018 Lynda Petherick, James Shulmeister, Jasper Knight
SWEEP -‐ Southern westerlies evolution in environments of the past (aligned to IFG SHAPE)
No specific activities in 2018 Jessica Hinojosa, Heidi A. Roop, Andrew Lorrey
C-‐PEAT: A forward modeling approach to paleoclimatic interpretation of peat cores
A meeting at Texas A&M University, US, was held in May 2018 with 20 pariticipants from different parts of the world. The meeting’s emphasis was on (1) discussing future research directions for C-‐PEAT, and (2) developing a framework to make peatlands a more prevalent climate archive. The peat core synthesis work that has been accomplished by the C-‐PEAT working group over the past five years could be used to complement other widely used terrestrial archives such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments.
Julie Loisel, Angela Gallego-‐Sala, Atte Korhola
SACCOM SEQS DATESTRA: Database of terrestrial European stratigraphy
Conference and field workshop in Slovenia on cave sediments (143 participants), and continued development of Europe Quaternary stratigraphy.
Pierluigi Pieruccini, Markus Fiebig, Guzel Danukalova
SEQS CROSSTRAT: Cross checking of stratigraphic data
Cancelled Sahra Talamo
NAQS -‐ Working Group on northeastern African Quaternary Stratigraphy
Conference in Zagreb (Croatia) for ECSs from Balkans focused on NE African geoarchaeology (>20 participants).
Leszek Marks, Fabian Welc, Lenka Lisá
INTAV EXTRAS: Extending tephras as a global geoscientific research tool stratigraphically, spatially, analytically, and temporally
Conference, and database and field workshop in Romania on new methods in tephrachronology (92 participants).
David J. Lowe, Takehiko Suzuki, Britta Jensen, Peter Abbott, Siwan Davies, Daniel Veres
TERPRO G@GPS: Groundwater and global palaeoclimate signals
Workshop and fieldwork on “Groundwater and Environmental Change” in Guangzhou/Zhanjiang, China, Dec 1st-‐7th, 2018
Jianyao Chen, Dioni Cendón, Jason Gurdak, Rein Vaikmäe
EGSHaz: Earthquake geology and seismic hazards
2018 PATA Days in Possidi, Greece, 112 participants from 21 countries, Workshop and Field Trips
Ioannis Papanikolaou, Petra Štěpančíková, Christoph Grützner, Beau Whitney, Neta Wechsler, Jakub Stemberk
QUASAP: Kinds and rates Workshop/Fiel Trip in the Yukon Daniela Sauer
of soil-‐forming processes reflected in Quaternary soils and palaeosols and their use as palaeoenvironmental archives
Territory, Canada, in August 2018
HEX: Palaeohydrological extreme events: evidences and archives
Workshop at University of Szeged (Hungary), 6-‐9th September 2018, and field trip
Alessandro Fontana, Jürgen Herget
UPACCOBB: Understanding paleoclimate change and pathways to resilience in changing climate at Cox’s Bazar City, Bangladesh
Seminar on “Hydrogeochemical and isotopic signatures for the identification of seawater intrusion in the paleobeach aquifer of Cox’s Bazar City and its surrounding area, South-‐east Bangladesh”, Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University, Dec.11, 2018
Ashraf Ali Seddique, Rakibul Hassan
SKILLS Mezhyrrich International Archaeology summer school Ukraine: interdisciplinary study of a Late Upper Pleistocene site
Field-‐based workshop on Upper Palaeolithic archaeology and palaeontology for 19 Ukrainian and French graduate students and early researchers held July 15-‐30th
Pavlo Shydlovskyi, Stéphane Péan
2018 World Dendro Conference: Dendroecological fieldweek Bhutan
Week-‐long field and lab workshop in Bhutan mainly for DCSs organized by scientists to utilitize evolving methods using tree rings for environment change and hazards (~50 participants).
Paul Krusic, Edward Cook, Sangay Wangchuk
The African Quaternary: environments, ecology and humans (AFQUA)
A workshop providing training to ECRs and students from 7 African countries held in conjunction with the African Quaternary Association meetings in Nairobi, Kenya, July 14-‐22. Topics included presentation of research, grant writing and the use of analytical techniques such as the statistical package R, age-‐depth modelling, database management, and data-‐model comparison.
Brian Chase, Christine Ogola
DIG: Fourth workshop on Dinaric glaciation: Krk Island and Gorski Kotar, Croatia
Field workshop on Krk Island on glacial landforms and sediments in the NE Mediterranean for ECSs (~12 participants).
Ljerka Marjanac, Tihomir Marjanac, Manja Žebre
ECR iSLR18: Impacts of sea-‐level rise from past to present, Utrecht, The Netherlands
A 3-‐day meeting for 76 graduate students and ECRs from 26 countries. Researchers presented their research in lectures, posters and in the field.
Aimée Slangen, Kay Koster, Bas de Boer, Rob Barnett, Eduardo Alarcon, Freek Busschers, Thijs van Kolfschoten
PARTICIPATION IN INQUA ICP PROJECTS
Participation in INQUA activities recorded by individual-‐events for (a) nations, (b) geography, (c) gender, and (d) career level. The number of records is 967.
Participation events by gender
Female Male
Participation events by ranking
Mid-‐Senior Career Researchers Early Career Researchers
Ph.D. students M.S. student
The events included the first ever jointly initiated meeting between INQUA and PAGES and was co-‐sponsored and organized by researchers from Utrecht and Delft Universities, the Geological Survey of the Netherlands (TNO) and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research (NIOZ). The core organizing committee was made up of ECR researchers from the Netherlands Aimée Slangen (NIOZ), Kay Koster (TNO), Bas de Boer (Utrecht University), INQUA representatives Lyudmila Shumilovskikh (Germany-‐Russia) and Eduardo Alarcon (Chile-‐Venezuela), and PAGES representatives Rob Barnett (UK) and Xavier Benito (USA). The three-‐day meeting ‘Impacts of sea-‐level rise from past to present’ brought together 76 ECR/PHD researchers (37 female/39 male) from 26 countries, to showcase worldwide research highlighting causes, detection and impacts on ecology and humans. The meeting included an evening in which a panel of experts answered questions from the audience of meeting attendees and the general public. The meeting was very successful and the intention is that it will serve as a template for a series of INQUA-‐PAGES co-‐funded events that emphasizes the role of Quaternary research in addressing major societal problems.
INQUA Foundation
A legal document prepared by van Doorne, an Amsterdam law company, was finalized and emailed to all national members for their comments and their support . A reminder that the purpose for forming a foundation is multifold, namely:
1. Provides a method for INQUA to become a legally-‐registered organization 2. Enables INQUA to be registered as a non-‐profit organization in the Netherlands 3. Provides legal protection for officers of the INQUA Executive – currently there is none 4. Has the potential to provide an alternative revenue stream. Enables INQUA to seek donations from
individuals and corporations to support its activities 5. Enables INQUA bank accounts to be moved from Louvain-‐La-‐Neuve, Belgium to Amsterdam, the
Netherlands. This provides easier access for INQUA officers who have to present themselves at the bank for access to the accounts.
The response to the concept of forming a foundation was favorable. There were a few requests for further information which were provided. The most consequential of these concerned the independence of the Foundation and whether or not it could authorize expenditures that were not approved by INQUA. The
Participants in the INQUA-‐PAGES meeting ‘Impacts of rapid sea-‐level rise from past to present ’ held in Utrecht, The Netherlands
Foundation by definition and structure is part of INQUA and the only expenditures it can make have to be approved by the INQUA Executive. Initially we were informed by van Doorne that there had to be a Dutch national on the Foundation board. On rechecking with van Doorne, this was a misunderstanding and is not a requirement. The addition of a Foundation represents a significant change to the INQUA structure that the Executive decided not to finalize its completion until the International Council has had the opportunity for further discussion in Dublin. Publications
1. Quaternary International
The number of pages published in 2018 was 8038 representing 54 volumes, 50 of which were special issues. The large backlog which had been inherited by the editorial board in 2015 is mostly published thanks to the past efforts of Min-‐Te Chen (Taiwan), Asfawossen Asrat (Ethiopia), Zhonghui Liu (China), Barbara Mauz (UK), Alessandra Negri (Italy), and Florent Rivals (Spain). The impact factor is 2.163 and is expected to rise in the future. In May, four of five Associate Editors resigned precipitating a crisis in management. After discussions between INQUA and Elsevier, directed towards minimizing disruption in publication, the editorial board was dissolved. Thijs van Kolfschoten took over as interim editor-‐in-‐chief in July and he will serve in that capacity until the Dublin congress. The plan is to have a new editorial structure and personal in place by August 1, 2019.
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Quaternary International basic metrics (a) submission and rejection rates, (b) global publication trends
2. Quaternary Perspectives Two issues of Quaternary Perspectives (QP 25-‐1, 25-‐2) were published during 2018 by the editors Lyudmila Shumilovskikh (Russia-‐Germany), Erick Robinson (USA) and Keely Mills (UK). QP provides the opportunity for PI’s of INQUA-‐funded activities to highlight their research in an informal manner. The quality and presentation of content is excellent. Proposed changes to Commission operating procedures for the Inter-‐Congress Period 2019-‐2023 The Executive has held lengthy discussions about the commission structure during the last three executive meetings and in numerous emails shared with the presidents of the commissions. Commissions for past 15 years have served as the foci for INQUA's intercongress period (ICP) activities and the consensus is that have for the most part they have provided that function. The Executive feels that commissions should continue into the next ICP but with changes that will simplify their operations at the same time as providing more visibility to INQUA. Altogether, the INQUA Exec is requested to fund about 25 IFGs and projects each year. The IFGs and projects share about 115,000 euros and the consequences of that are often small projects with limited impact and often little visibility for INQUA. Communications between commissions and the executive has also been a problem and needed to be simplified. A draft document for change was prepared and emailed to commission officers in the form of a ballot. This generated a healthy discussion and the main points to arise from it are listed below:
1) The International Council is recommended to elect vice-‐presidents with specific responsibilities. Those responsibilities have been identified as: membership and dues, commission oversight, publications and communications.
2) Number of commissions to stay the same 3) The number of IFGs per commission to be ideally no more than two 4) Each commission to be encouraged to organize a mid-‐inter-‐congress meeting. The expectation is that
INQUA funds will be matched with those from other sources and the result will provide greater visibility for INQUA
5) The process to elect commission officers is to be made more transparent by open positions filled by nominations from all corresponding members, not only those present at the congress.
6) Each commission is to establish an advisory board which will represent the breadth of science within its domain.
Congress-‐related activities Peter Coxon (Ireland), chair of the IQUA Local Organizing Committee, provided a report on progress that has been made in organizing the congress. A dedicated web site is operational and major deadlines have been established http://www.inqua2019.org. Also, pre-‐ and post-‐ congress field trips have been organized ,including additional trips by the Quaternary Research Association. INQUA will provide a substantial number of travel bursaries to ECRs and DCRs who have met the minimum requirement of having an abstract accepted for the congress. The INQUA Executive worked with
representatives of ‘Keynote’, the organization subcontracted by the Irish Quaternary Association (IQUA) to provide logistical support for the Congress ,to facilitate the application process and develop a set of deadlines synchronized with those of IQUA. The online application form for travel support is linked to the abstract submission form on the congress website http://www.inqua2019.org/bursaries/ International Council of Science and GeoUnion Activities INQUA is a member of the International Science Council (ISC) https://council.science which formed in 2017 with the merger of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the International Social Science Council (ISSC). In early July, Allan Ashworth co-‐chaired a GeoUnions meeting hosted by Nicolas Paparoditis, director of research labs of MATIS (French Mapping Agency -‐ IGN) in St-‐Mandé, Paris. INQUA is one of nine scientific unions with shared interests in the earth and its position in space http://www.icsu-‐geounions.org. The research fields include astronomy, cartography, geology, geophysics, geography, geodesy, radio sciences, remote sensing, and soil sciences. The meeting was held in conjunction with ISC, the parent organization, to discuss issues of shared interest. At the meeting we reviewed the credentials of nominees for the new ICS governing board and also discussed possible ways in which we could collaborate on proposals to address selected UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The founding general assembly for ISC was held in Paris on July 3-‐5, at the Maison des Océans. In attendance were delegates from 40 international scientific unions as well representatives from national academies of sciences and research councils. The meeting was lively with discussion on several membership and governance issues. Very importantly, a governing board and a new president and president-‐elect were elected. The new president is Daya Reddy (South Africa – computational mechanics) and the president-‐elect Peter Gluckman (New Zealand-‐physiology). There was a strong slate of geoscientists and environmental scientists running for various positions and the outcome was that four of the ten positions on the new governing board have backgrounds in Quaternary-‐related sciences; Geoffrey Boulton (UK) is a glacial geologist, Melody Burkins (USA) has a background in Quaternary science, Martin Visbeck (Germany) is an Oceanographer and Anna Davis (Ireland) is an environmental scientist. Additionally, the new Secretary for ICS is Alik Ismael-‐Zadeh, (Germany), a geophysicist.
Report submitted by Allan Ashworth, President January 28th, 2019